


white rabbits on the run

by king_wizard



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Anal Sex, Angst, Dubious Consent, Low-self-esteem!Dean, M/M, Oral Sex, Pre-Series, Protective Sam Winchester, Riding, abusive!John, bottom!Dean, guilty!dean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-05 18:37:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1828259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/king_wizard/pseuds/king_wizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sam are sick. Dean is the disease.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of two parts. Takes place pre-series. Dean is 20. Contains John/Dean and abusive!John, although Dean doesn’t see it that way. Second part will have a happy-ish Sam/Dean-ish ending. Title from Vanessa Carlton’s Carousel.

When he's drunk. Beer, liquor, blood, grief. The inebriation's flavor doesn't matter, because it's always replaced.

Dean wonders if he has a better aftertaste. Is his sweat sweeter or more sour than Busch? Is his mouth as hot and wet as a monster's insides? Does he look like his mother when he cries, sound like her? Did his dad kiss her tears away with the same soft, soft sorrow?

  
It would be nicer, he thinks, if it started that way. A father just trying to comfort his broken son.

  
It would damn him less. But it would damn John more, and Dean can't wish that. He can't take it back, though, and he can't stop.

  
He's sick with the way his dad looks at him - actually looks, actually sees him, and touches him, and loves him. Only in the dark. Only when he's drunk. Only when he's heavy and stretching like the horizon and pressing all of his possibilities and stars into Dean's body.

  
This is the one thing Sam can't give their dad, the one thing their dad doesn't want. Dean has watched John's fire, careful and alert, has watched it never once flicker towards Sam.

  
This is the one time John chooses him. Sends Sam to spend the night with friends, chooses Dean's mouth over Sam's safety. Leaves a lead for the morning, chooses Dean's ass over saving everything.

  
Dean's high on it. Gets foggy eyed and haze brained and can't remember what he's supposed to care about or prioritize. Body goes numb, can't even feel the wetness pooling in his eyes when he swallows John's cock too far, the burn when he tells John he's stretched enough and isn't, has to squirm too tight to get John's dick all the way inside.

  
Doesn't even know if he comes half the time, too delirious and strung out on the honey drizzled in his ears, the feel so good, so good for me, good boy, my good, beautiful boy. The words are more surreal than the way John fucks him, than the fact that John's fucking him.

  
In the light he takes extra-long showers. His skin grows tighter under the sun, sags as darkness falls until he's loose enough to take everything his dad gives.

  
Sometimes, when it's brightest, he's sorry. He's so, so sorry. Wants to heal the disease he breathed into his dad.

  
But most times, night or day or the misty edge between, he's thankful.

  
-

  
Until Jefferson City, Missouri. Post card streets lined with historical architecture and flourished with happy little people. Everything is pretty like sunlight.

  
Six people have drowned at the public pool. It's gate is closed and the cement walls are dry when Sam and Dean climb the fence. Moonlight pools into the center, waving like water, inviting Dean inside.

  
"Too bad they drained it," Dean is saying, voice far away from his own ears as he stares, enchanted, at silver stream patterns.

  
Sam's silence is enough to draw him from his stupor. Blinking, he turns to his brother, whose gaze is fixed on his chest and cheeks are soft with pink.

  
"Sam?" he croaks, throat and brain draining as dry as the pool. "Sammy?"

  
"Yeah?" Sam says, finally dragging his eyes away from Dean's body to Dean's face - but not Dean's eyes.

  
"Nothing. It's - nothing, never mind. I'm gonna take a closer look at the pool."

  
-

  
Dean tries not to think about the way Sam looked at him.

  
He can't get the plump smiled woman at River Liquor to sell him any whiskey, or the bartender at Ted's who calls him son to serve him, but he does flirt his way through a group of giggling college girls to buy him a small bottle of Everclear. He's a year away from 21 and they're sympathetic to his frustration.

  
By the time he picks up Sammy from school, he's numb. Floating.

  
Sam won't look at him at all. Makes it easy to forget the glitter in his eyes the night before.

  
-

  
Just a ghost, as it turns out, and Dean is pouring over wobbly maps with wobbly eyes for the grave site when Sam moves from his bed to the tiny table where Dean sits.

  
"You don't need this," Sam says softly, fingers sweeping over the Everclear lid.

  
"Have another D.A.R.E class, Sammy? Didn't know they still had those for juniors."

  
Doesn't get a rise out of Sam. Instead of huffing, Sam lays a gentle hand on Dean's shoulder, and repeats, "You don't need this."

  
Sam's touch, so timid, so soft, as if Dean is porcelain, stills time. Dean's blood flows slower. Feels like he's encased in mud when he looks up to see Sam looking down at him. Sees his dad in his baby brother's face.

  
Time slams fast forward. Dean startles out of the touch, chair falling with a snap as he quick silvers away.

  
-

  
He seduced his dad. It was a subconscious seduction. Didn't know he was luring John in but must've known, drawn John to his bed accidentally on purpose.

  
But not Sam. He'd never do this to Sam. Never lick sugar from Coke bottles, make his mouth sticky with it, to make Sam crave him.   
Never sway his hips when he walks in front of Sam. Never clean the guns with gentle reverence, run his fingers over it like a thick, silky cock or suck it into his mouth to make Sam hard from across a shadowed room.

  
It's his dad he's dragged into the half-dark. It's his dad he needs this from. He already has Sam's heart, doesn't need his body as a balm or wound.

  
Frenzy fire burns and burns and burns him as he thinks. Bangs his forehead into shower tiles, warm from scalding water. How the fuck could he do this to Sam?

  
When did he do it, where, why why why. He didn't mean it. Never means any of the ways he hurts or lets Sam down, but meant this the least.

  
Drills into his head and searches. What has he done? How can he undo it? Please, fucking please, he begs unsure of what he's begging to, please let there be a way to undo it.

  
-

  
There isn't.

  
He does everything. Embarrasses Sam more than normal in front of his little friends. Flirts even more brazenly. Calls him nothing but Sammy. Doesn't tell him about hunts, doesn't give details or answers. Orders food for him and cuts his steak like he's 6 instead of 16. Stops showering and using deodorant and washing his hair. Stops cutting his hair until it's long and stringy.

  
He's gross, and obnoxious, and undesirable. And Sam still wants. Still watches him then sneaks into the bathroom, gets flustered and angry when Dean flirts, puts his backpack over his lap when they sit too close in the Impala.

  
Dean's lost. Nauseates and fevered, all the time. Panicked, all the time. Terrified their dad will notice and throw him away with the rest of their evil trash.

  
Terrified John will ask him how he could do this to his baby brother, to precious, perfect Sam. Because he doesn't know, he doesn't know, and he wishes he hadn't.

  
-

  
The euphoria of riding John into a dusty, abused motel mattress turns ugly. He keeps his eyes closed now, or turns around, slutty little cowgirl, and stares at the wall. Pretends it's sand rough on his shoulders instead of his dad's beard, a hot beach under his thighs instead of his dad's skin.

  
If John notices he doesn't come untouched anymore, or that he chokes himself on his moans instead of sobbing them, then John doesn't say anything. He doesn't stop pressing Dean into the shower or arranging Dean's hands and knees on colorless carpet.

  
While John fucks his insides and brains to puddles, he tries to remember how he did it. How did he guide his dad to this dirty floor, how did he lead Sam here, how can he put Sam back somewhere clean?

  
His guts recoil into his throat at the thought that John might follow. He might lose his dad again. Might not be chosen again. He doesn't want to put John back. Wants to keep him right here, buried, while Sam lives happy on the surface.

  
-

  
It's a Tuesday in Tennessee when Dean throws up behind Flowers Public Library.

  
Some sort of barrier or dam breaks, some sort of something that was keeping him above disgust and guilt. Whatever it was, it isn't anymore, shattering slices of loathing that cut him up from the inside. He's drowning in the black blood when Sam runs to his side.

  
"Dean? Are you sick? Dean?"

  
And Dean laughs around another wave of bile because oh, is he ever. Sick sick sick. It's all he is.

  
Sam's fingers brush his back. He stumbles from the soft touch. Doesn't deserve it, doesn't want to get anymore of his disease over his little brother.

  
"Do you need - "

  
What he needs is to be quarantined. What he croaks is, "Back inside, Sammy."

  
Sam doesn't move. Just watches with dumb glassy eyes as Dean's sickness spills over everything.

  
-

  
There's something wrong with him.

  
He's known it, pretended otherwise. Convinced himself it was love and desire, so overwhelming and so unbearable that a hero like his dad couldn't fight it, that was shaping John's hands around his hips. Convinced himself John owed him the kisses and the fucks and the afterglow holding for always doting on Sam, always loving Sam. Made himself find warmth and belonging and comfort in the way John devoured him.

  
But he dragged his dad through filth. Something in the bones of him is poison. Maybe he doesn't even have bones. Maybe he's just made of thick caked mud. Maybe it's just dirt pounding in him and keeping him together.

  
The little glows of pride and quiet, muscle deep happiness seem another world ago. How did he ever lay in John's arms and smile?   
How did he ever breathe around all the hate he feels for himself and fucking smile, fucking smile, knowing the evil he bled all over his own dad?

  
His dad must hate him for the things he's forced. Sammy must hate him, too. If they hate him as much as he hates himself, even a blink of it...

  
How can they stand to look at him? Breathe the same breath he breathes? How can they not have bled themselves dry, sick that the same dirty blood flowing through Dean flows through them?

  
He wants everything that's inside of him out. Out out out. But this thing that drives good men down is tattooed. It beats in him, and he can't beat out.

  
-

  
In the brown, endless plains of Moody, Oklahoma, Dean hangs limp and hopes the linebacker punching his stomach will beat it out of him.

  
There's blood or sweat on his cheek and his eyes are dry. Each breath is rammed out of him. His body is sore, bones are sore. He's borderline delirious. It's all the pain of being fucked, none of the pleasure that he doesn't deserve.

  
Sam, who wasn't supposed to follow him to the pool hall, pulls the mammoth off. Dean pants against the alley and watches his brother bring the guy to the ground, watches his brother who cried the first time he ganked a vampire beat blood out of a human not much older than himself.

  
"Stop," he says, and Sam doesn't. Fists keep flying like timed machines, unfeeling as they hit and hit and hit. Dean pushes himself away and stumbles forward. "Stop, Sam. Sammy."

  
There are tears in Sam's eyes and blood on his knuckles. Dean put them there.

  
-

  
"You shouldn'ta wailed on that guy," Dean says, sitting with Sam on a damp curb, more sober than he's been in months. Edges of everything are still too fuzzy for him to walk back to the motel yet. Just stares at asphalt and tries not to smell all the sour stenches.

  
"You shouldn't have let him wail on you. What the hell, Dean? You could've taken that guy. Why..."

  
Sam's anger softens into a choke. Silence. Too long silence, and Dean tenses for the touch that comes a moment later. First to his elbow, then his shoulder, before fingers tremble through the blood on his cheekbone.

  
He hisses and pulls away as Sam asks, "Why did you let him hurt you?"

  
"I didn't," Dean lies. "Just...caught me off guard. I was wasted."

  
"When aren't you?" Sam says bitterly. His fingers trail Dean's jaw, tentative, reverent, and Dean wishes the meat head would've killed him. His reckless idiocy shouldn't draw Sam's tenderness, which is meant for better people. He thought this would fix, not break Sam more. But Sam is still watching him, angry and sad and loving. "Dean. I know something's going on with you."

  
Dean shrugs Sam's gentleness away. "M'fine."

  
"Why can't you just tell me what's wrong?"

  
Everything. Everything is wrong with Dean, and he doesn't know how to fix it.

  
"S'nothing, Sammy. Stop worrying."

  
"I am worried. You're drunk, all the time, and you're on edge, and you won't... You won't look me in the eye anymore. Are you - did I do something?"

  
Dean snaps his neck to assure Sam that, "No. No, Sammy. 'Course not." He wants to smile, ruffle Sam's hair the way Sam hates, but he doesn't. Can't. Things like that, plus whatever's lurking in his skin, are what makes Sam love him.

  
"'Cause I can't - " Sam's crying now, sucking in shallow breaths. If Dean soothes the hurt, he'll deepen it. "You're my brother. You're...   
You're more than that. Dean, you're all I have, and if you hate me, I can't - "

  
"I couldn't - " ever hate you, Sammy, love you and dad more than anything. Don't say that, can't say that. "You got dad."

  
Sam shakes his head. "No, Dean, you don't get it. You're - fuck." Stands up, too much energy in his too long limbs. He paces, wild colt finding his legs, then stops. Dean tells himself not to look up, up, up, by the time he's staring at Sam's face, floating in the dark directly above him. "Dean. You're - you're everything, and I love you more than anything, and I'm - Christ. I'm in - "

  
Sweep the leg. Dean never thought anything from the Karate Kid to save his life, but he sweeps Sam's leg and his brother goes down, love confession smashing into the road. It scatters like dry bones, rolling after Dean as he runs from Sam's fallen figure.

  
-

  
Two days later, Dean tells John he was drunk and mouthy and a guy half his size took him down.

  
John doesn't quite believe the story, but he's disappointed. Won't look at Dean as they gather their belongings. It does the job.

  
-

  
For a little while.

  
Sam is at a three day bible camp with Pastor Jim. He hadn't spoken to Dean in a week before they dropped him off.

  
Then John came down with it again. Fevered with his want for Dean, stomach rolling bottomless with his hunger. Dean doesn't know what he did to re-ignite it.

  
The motel door is cool against his cheek. He tries to count the diamonds in the wallpaper pattern. Loses track every time John twists rough in his ass, brushes that bright spot. Can't stop his eyes from fluttering closed or a low moan as John adds a third finger.

  
"Christ, boy," John mouths into the nape of his neck. Lips on his skin, eyes caught on the way his own fingers spread Dean's body, get gobbled up. "What you do to me."

  
Dean's eyes fly. "What?" he pants, desperate to know.

  
John doesn't answer. Murmurs gruff and scrapes his teeth over Dean's skin, sucks too light to bruise. Dean dislodges John's mouth as he turns. Stares urgent and frantic and pleading.

  
"What do I do?" Begging. "Tell me. Whatever it is, tell me and I'll stop, I swear."

  
Fingers halt in their demands. His dad swallows. "Dean."

  
"Just tell me. I promise. Daddy, please, I promise I'll stop, just tell me - "

  
John stumbles out of him. Stumbles to the bathroom. Dean hears the door lock. He stands with his pants around his ankles, cock still half-hard, sick thing, and his ass gaping in the cooled air. Waits until he hears the shower running, then puts his clothes back on and requests another room.

  
-

  
Five weeks, three days, a couple of hours. His dad remains clean for five weeks, three days, and a couple of hours.

  
He's coming out of the bathroom as John is going in. Hanging in the door frame, he breathes and drags John right back in. It's the inhale, sharp, slow, heavy with all the times before, that has his dad's gaze dropping to his mouth, yanks his dad's tongue from the root and sucks it inside.

  
Dean whimpers into the kiss. He thought he'd done it. Made John immune to him, and could find a way to deliver the same antidote to Sam. But he can't be cured.

  
John backs him into the vanity, one hand on his jaw, the other flowing water under his t-shirt. Stroking his jumping stomach, dancing over his ribs, tweaking his nipple.

  
Tears bite as John seats him on the counter. He won't let them fall. Drowns in them while John works his jeans open and grips his dick, already hard, already drizzling pre-cum and aching.

  
Wants to tell his dad how sorry he is. How he would do anything to fix John and Sam, set them free from his black hole pull. Anything.

Lets John, his own dad, how can he do this to his hero, jack him off as he pants noises into John's mouth. After, he sinks to his knees and takes John too deeply too quickly. Tries to choke himself on John's thick cock. Swallows, remains breathing.

  
Remains a disease.

  
-

  
Nantucket is lovely in the summer. Sam finds a cute girl with a cute dog to play Frisbee with on the beach. He keeps looking at Dean. Missing the good, normal life he's always wanted to stare at his brother's toes in the sand.

  
Dean doesn't even laugh when the Frisbee nails Sam on the side of his head and he loses his balance, trips over the dog that barks happy and licks his face. It's a bright, shiny picture of the ways Dean is killing him.

  
-

  
He's killing them. Slowly and with helpless desperation. He'd rather kill himself.

  
If he thought it would exterminate the ugly growth he's planted, he'd off himself in a single breath. He'd smile into the concrete, the   
barrel, the noose. Welcome it.

  
But it would kill them.

  
The only option is extraction. Suck out the poison of him, spit himself somewhere far, far away.

  
-

  
It's cold on the ferry. Dean pulls his dad's jacket closer.

  
Awful of him to keep it, but he's too selfish, too cruel in his neediness. It's John's scent, smothering him, and Sam's favorite knife, that let him leave. Couldn't go without a few pieces of home.

  
He said goodbye to the Impala, but not to his dad or brother. Tells himself he wanted to spare them the hurt.

  
The ferry nears the shoreline, bleak and fuzzy under overcast. Admits to himself that he couldn't bear the relief that was sure to shine in their eyes when they realized they were finally, finally free.


	2. Two

Dean spends the first year in Mexico.   
  
Chupacabras are real. Ghosts are everywhere. Tiny towns think he's a hero. The law doesn't bother him. Senoritas adore him.  
  
It's unbearably, unbearably lonely.   
  
He aches all the time in every emptied out space. Dead.  
  
-  
  
Danny and Lisa, hunter team of twins, take him from Mexico City to San Francisco.   
  
They're Asian, but every time Dean thinks of asking what flavor, he sees Sam's disapproving bitch glare. Keeps his mouth shut during most of their hunts together.  
  
-  
  
He drifts to Oregon. Lots of supernatural activity in Portland, and lots of pot from friendly, higher educated faces.   
  
It's easy to lose the months there.  
  
-  
  
It's not often he goes home with anyone.  
  
People try.   
  
Pretty girls, gorgeous ones, women with curves and flat stomachs or rounded softness, Asian babes and Indian beauties. An entire sorority, on one occasion, and Dean deflated. They were nice kids, celebrating some charity award, but a few beers and pulls on Dean's slickness and they were giggling around dirt. He was sick with how sick he'd made them.  
  
Men. Handsome and not - the not's more aggressive when they aren't too nervous to approach him. Taller than him, shorter, way, way shorter. Built like blocks that could crush him or willow wisps he could break. Could break any of them, really, says no to every heated gaze.  
  
Boys.   
  
A slip of bronze skin, no older than 18, offers a smile and more for a pitcher of beer. He's got blue eyes but they're slanted Sammy eyes, and when he smiles one dimple pops.  
  
Dean takes him behind the seedy club, into the seedy alley, and puts him in a choke hold. Promises to kill the kid if he doesn't swear on everything in the god damn world that he'll go to college, fall in love with someone special, get a good job and help make his hometown a better place.  
  
The few times Dean falls into bed with another body, he pays. Always more than the asking price. Always says he's sorry. Always is.   
  
  
-  
  
Sam would be 19 the day Dean buys a motorcycle. It’s not his baby, but he doesn’t need a passenger seat anymore.   
  
Wishes Sammy happy birthday, tilting Jack into a shadowed motel room. Wonders what Sam got this year. If he has his own set of wheels now, if he’s driving the Impala, or their dad’s truck. If John took his baby back.   
  
Wonders what Sam wished for.   
  
-  
  
They don’t look for him.   
  
He’s good at hiding, because he learned to hide from John Wincester.   
  
But he learned to hide from John Winchester, who doesn’t look for him. Sam doesn’t, either, because he could always find Dean, even when he wasn’t looking.  
  
It’s a good sign. Means they’re getting clean.   
  
He’s getting dirtier.  
  
-  
  
Four years and twenty days after Dean heals his family, he gets stoned with a psychic and drives to Bobby’s.   
  
Because he’s a fucking girl, he cries as soon as he sees the old bastard’s face. Fuck starts crying too.   
  
They hug a good minute before Bobby punches him in the jaw.  
  
-  
  
They drink beer and watch telenovelas and avoid John Winchester for three months.  
  
One gray, shapeless morning, in a month and day Dean can’t name, Bobby answers his phone, “Hey, John. Can’t say it’s good to hear from ‘ya.”  
  
Dean inhales. Forgets how to exhale until his lungs start burning.   
  
“Okay. See you then.” A pause as Bobby meets his eyes, asking something Dean can’t  hear. “You got those boys with you?” Longest heartbeat of Dean’s life. “On his own? Well, good for him. And Dean?”  
  
Dean hears the line go dead.   
  
“Your dad’s on his way.”  
  
Dean grips the couch arm. Only for a second. “Okay. Well, then. I’m out.”  
  
On his feet before Bobby asks him, “Why’d you leave?”  
  
Sighs soft around a hard burst of anger. “You’ve had a long time to ask me that, old man. And you pick now to bring it up?”  
  
“I was tryin’ to give you some time, boy. Let you work it out. I thought when you didn’t say anything, when you didn’t ask about them – ”  
  
“It doesn’t – I left, okay. I don’t want to go back. They don’t want me back. Nothin’ else to it.”  
  
“Do you have any idea what kind of  _Hell_ it’s been these past years? All of us worried sick out of our minds and you couldn’t be bothered to at least tell us you were alive?”  
  
Pauses. They didn’t – no. Of course they didn’t. Shakes his head. “Don’t lay that crap on me. You really think dad couldn’t track me down if he wanted? You think I’m better at getting lost than John Winchester is at tracking down?”  
  
“You’re better at getting lost than any of us have ever been at finding.” Dean’s eyes fire wet, heart hammers, all so sudden he has to take a step back. “We looked for almost a year before we heard you were in Mexico. Hunting. Being reckless, and – ”  
  
“And stupid, and immature. I’ve heard this lecture before.”  
  
“What  _happened_ to you?” Bobby asks, tears welling fat in wrinkled red. “Boy I knew four years ago woulda never left his family in that sorta mess. Wouldn’t have hurt the people who cared about him – ”  
  
“But I was hurting them. Bobby, you don’t get it. I was…” Doesn’t want to say it, because he’s still wrong. Still so wrong that he wants Bobby to keep looking at him like he’s worthy of being missed. But he’s not. Can’t keep Bobby suspended in this pain for nothing. “I was making them sick.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“I can’t - ” talk about it, he can’t say. Brain gets swept up and away in panic, suddenly wonders how long it’s been since John called and now. “I just gotta go. Don’t tell him, okay.”  
  
“Boy – ”  
  
“Please, Bobby. I know I don’t deserve it but please, just do this one thing for me.”  
  
“I’ve done a lot of things for you. And I’m not the only one. Your daddy and your brother aren’t the only ones who – they aren’t your only family. They weren’t the only ones who grieved for you.”  
  
Neck can’t quite stay steady above shame, but Dean makes himself look Bobby in the eyes when he says, “I’m sorry.”  
  
-  
  
Of course Bobby fucking tells.  
  
-  
  
Sam writers him a letter. Nerd.  
  
Has only been calling the Blue Oak Inn home for three weeks when he gets it. Can tell the curve of Sam’s letters, see the flicks of Sam’s wrist when he was first practicing cursive and Dean had to show him the right way to hold a pencil.   
  
Heads towards Canada, because why not. Throws Sam’s letter away once he crosses the border.  
  
-  
  
John actually calls.   
  
He doesn’t answer.  
  
-  
  
Quebec isn’t as fun as Mexico.   
  
Awful lot of demons doing nothing but enjoying low cost prescription pills and not locking their meatsuits’ doors. Gets a couple of exorcisms under his belt.   
  
All in all, it’s a vacation.  
  
-  
  
Back to reality in the states.   
  
Dean drops by a hunter bar to drop the word that Dean Winchester is back.   
  
Waits for Bobby. Another letter, or phone call.  
  
Nothing.  
  
Must’ve been a goodbye letter, he thinks, relieved and very, very alone. Must’ve been a goodbye phone call.   
  
-  
  
There’s a slice of apple pie town called Disney, Oklahoma. Nice people, quaint Main Street, cemeteries that stretch longer than the longest street. Ghosts and ghosts and ghosts.  
  
And ghosts.  
  
Sam knocks on his trailer. He doesn’t know it’s Sam, of course, or he would’ve kicked a window out and crawled belly over glass as fast as he could. Figured it was Jamie from across the street, looking to bum a cigarette and eyefuck him in the doorway.  
  
Breath leaves when he opens the door to see his baby brother, 22 years old and wide as a redwood and taller than him.  
  
“Sammy.”  
  
“Dean.” Fragileness of voice doesn’t fit the new body, does fit Dean’s memory. “It’s dad.”  
  
Dean peers around Sam’s mammoth shoulders. “Where is he? What’s wrong?”  
  
“I don’t know. He went on a hunt. Dean. I haven’t heard from him in days.”  
  
-  
  
Seeing Sam in his trailer makes his heart hurt. Hearing Sam ignore the trench of time between them, cut straight to the jugular,  _dad’s missing and I need you to help me find him_ , hurts too, though it shouldn’t. He already knew they let him go, is grateful for it.   
Should be grateful to see the man his brother’s become. That there’s no hate or heat in those eyes. That Sam chose him to find their father. It’s pragmatism, of course. If Dean is so good at running, surely he’ll be able to find. But it still calls to the ugliness in Dean that always craved.  
  
Should say no and move again. But he craves.   
  
Caves.   
  
Climbs into the passenger seat of the Impala and feels like he’s come home to a ruin. Doesn’t say a word when Sam’s clash melody music steams from the radio. Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts his cakehole.  
  
-  
  
Sam doesn’t wait as long as Bobby to ask why Dean left. Dean didn’t expect him to.   
  
They’re in a hotel room. Picked the same sides of the room they always used to. It’s almost as if nothing has changed.   
  
Neither of them are asleep when Sam speaks into the darkness. “Was it because of me?”  
  
“It had nothing to do with you.” True in a way, but Dean’s mouth is acidic with the lie of it. “Or dad. I just… Needed out.”  
  
Quiet for a stretch as long as Sam’s new bones before he says, “You really think I’m buying that?” No, but Dean had hoped. “You’re still so full of shit.”   
  
He is.  
  
-  
  
The next morning they’re in a diner, newspapers spread in front of them until black and grey bleed together.   
  
“You never wrote me back.”  
  
Takes a few blinks for Dean to realize what Sam’s talking about. Sways on the already precarious beam, because he’d assumed whatever was in that letter didn’t invite or require response. What had Sam said to him? What had Sam wanted him to say back?  
  
Too chicken shit to tell his brother he was too chicken shit to read it in the first place, Dean shrugs and peers into the black of his coffee. “I didn’t know what to say.”  
  
“You didn’t even read it, did you?”  
  
“I did – ”  
  
“You know what, Dean? Fuck you. I don’t know why I even tracked you down for this.” He storms from the diner booth, gets to the door, only to storm right back. People are politely looking away. “Actually, that was a lie. I tracked you down because I  _missed_ you. Even after all the crap you put me and dad and everyone else stupid enough to care about you through, I missed you. I thought… God, I thought we could find dad together, be a family again. Don’t know why I thought you’d care enough to be honest with me after dodging me like I’m some sort of disease for the past  _six years_  – ”  
  
“Don’t say that!” Sam startles into silence. Dean can feel the tears in his eyes, the patrons forgetting their manners to watch them, but he can’t quiet the desperation despair. Everyone can hear the screams echoing in his head anyway, and it drags every pulse of pain from his gut to his throat to hear those words from Sammy’s mouth. “You’re not a  _disease_ , Sam. I am. And you can’t see it. Neither could dad. That’s why I left. I  _had_ to. Before I made you even sicker.”  
  
Sam shrinks three sizes. “Dean, no, how could you ever think that? Was it… Was it because of me? I know, I mean, I knew you knew how I felt about you. But that wasn’t – you weren’t making me  _sick_.”  
  
“You sayin’ you weren’t?”   
  
“No,” Sam grits. “No, I was. But you didn’t make me that way. It was never you, Dean.”  
  
“Sammy – ”  
  
“You left me. For years. All alone, not a word, just poof. Abandoned me. Weren’t there to do whatever you think you did to me, and I still – Dean, I  _still_  – ”  
  
Sam’s phone rings. It’s dad.  
  
-  
  
“He okay?” Dean asks when Sam slides back into the Impala.   
  
Sam shreds him with a look. “He’s fine.”  
  
Sweat oozes from every pore, and he shakes his head. “He – you gonna meet up with him? After you drop me off?”  
  
Flex of jaw, fingers, knuckles popping sickly as Sam grips the wheel and stares straight ahead. “No.”  
  
“…no, you guys aren’t – ”  
  
“No, we aren’t. Because if I see him, I’m gonna kill him.” Just pissed, just sputtering, but damn if his voice doesn’t tremor. Damn if his hands strangling the Impala don’t look if they couldn’t strangle John. “He couldn’t be bothered to call me for a month because he had to ‘check something out’.”  
  
“That’s just dad. You know how he gets.”  
  
“I didn’t tell him you were with me.” Dean swallows. Thankful. Aching. Tries to form his scabbed throat around  _take me home_ but then Sam says, “You said us. You said you were making us sick. Both of us.”  
  
Sudden as death there’s ice around him. On his skin, inside. Paralyzed and cold, all he can do is panic.   
  
“What did he do to you, Dean? What did he make you think you did?”  
  
“Nothing,” Dean says, automatic, mechanic. “I told you, it wasn’t you. It wasn’t either of you. It was me.”  
  
“It wasn’t.”  
  
“I was messing up hunts, and – and drinking too much, and – ”  
  
“I’m gonna kill him.” Sam turns the key.   
  
“Sammy,  _stop_. Just – ”  
  
“Did he hit you?” Pulling out of the lot, in front of a truck that blares, hitting 20 then 40 in a blink. “I knew he fucked you up. All the crap he put on your shoulders. But I never thought he’d – ”  
  
“Christ, Sam, no. Of course not. Dad would never lay a finger on me.” Looks Sam right in the eye as he says it, because it’s the truth. Dad would never have touched Dean if Dean hadn’t made him.   
  
Then Sam skids onto the shoulder. “Did he? Did he touch you?”  
  
“What?” Dean shivers, shudders and cracks but doesn’t break. Doesn’t break. “You mean did he _bad_ touch me? Jesus, Sammy. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”  
  
“I know he hurt you,” Sam grits, jaw hard, gaze soft and wet. “I don’t know how, but Dean, whatever he did, whatever he made you think you are, you’re  _not_. He’s the fuck up, okay? He’s the one who should hate himself, not you.”  
  
“Don’t – ” Dean doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels the damp of his voice. Barrels on. “Dad’s a hero. He’s always done what he’s had to do to protect us. And sometimes – yeah, sometimes he’s an ass. But listen to yourself Sam. This is  _dad_.”  
  
“This is  _you_.” They both look away. Anger draining, Sam sighs, “You don’t have to tell me. But don’t pretend he’s a saint. And don’t expect me not to hate him, or do everything I can to keep him away from you.”  
  
-  
  
Back in the winter chilled trailer, Dean stares at his phone. Feels the weight of it in his right palm, left. Drifts fingers over the buttons.  
  
He should call. Spill his fuck up. Warn dad that Sammy’s on a war path now and it leads directly to all the terrible things Dean has done.  
  
Can’t make himself. Tries so hard, so earnestly, so honestly. Can’t.   
  
-  
  
Thinks of moving to Flordia, maybe, but then what’s the point?   
  
Sam found him here. Nothing to stop him from finding Dean cleaning spirits out of old folk’s homes in palm tree heat.   
  
Hopeless and off kilter and clueless, Dean stares into a black TV, and remembers Sam’s words in the diner.   
  
 _I still, Dean, I still –_  
  
Running hasn’t cured them. Hasn’t even made a dent in their recovery.   
  
Stares at his hands and searches desperately for the curses or the slime or the power that has his family bound.   
  
-  
  
Sam calls him three times before he answers.  
  
Gets bitched out for screening his calls, then Sam asks if he’s heard of the minotaur in Checotah. Says he could use Dean’s help.   
  
Should say no. He cut these limbs off years ago. Been bleeding out through the phantom feel of them but has been surviving. John and Sammy have been surviving. Not broken, not soaring but better than they once were with the weight of Dean on their ankles.  
  
Says instead, “You want me to meet you there?”  
  
Hears that soft Sammy smile. “I’m already outside.”  
  
-  
  
Doesn’t ask questions. Desperate to know every breath Sammy’s taken, every hunt, every good and bad and funny thing. Used to know all of Sam and now there are gaping craters of nothingness in their history.  
  
Dean doesn’t deserve those parts of his brother. Doesn’t deserve any of it, really, so he licks his lips split and keeps his words to himself.  
  
Sam breaks off little pieces, crumbs Dean gluts himself on.   
  
When he was 18, he went to Stanford. Accepted with a full ride scholarship and Dean has never felt so proud. Dropped out after a year. Best friend had been a demon, apparently, and after he’d exorcised that black thing to Hell, he didn’t go back.  
  
He and John have stayed together, mostly. But a few months ago John started going out alone. Poured himself deeper and deeper into his journal and maps. Sam hates it, but says he’s glad John has fallen back into old obsessions. Doesn’t say he’s glad John stopped looking for Dean, because he doesn’t have to.   
  
Had two girlfriends since Dean’s been gone. A pretty blonde in college and a dark haired beauty. Shows Dean pictures. Dean’s chest is tight and his heart beats  _this, this is what you deserve, Sammy, gorgeous girls who love you and would have never hurt you_.  
  
They’re stumbling from a bar to the Impala when Sam stutters at the driver’s door. Dean sways to his side.  
  
That’s when Sam leans into baby and whispers that the blonde burned, courtesy of Sam’s demon friends. The brunette was a werewolf, and Sam took that beauty by himself. Put her down like a dog, he says, tears in his eyes.  
  
“You didn’t have a choice,” Dean soothes. “You did the right thing, Sam. Being a monster…” Closes his eyes to catch his breath. “No one can live like that.”  
  
Through quiet tears, Sam asks, “Is that what you think you are? Something that needs to be put down for its own good?”  
  
Shrugs. “Not mine.”  
  
“Then whose? Who could possibly be better off without you?” Drunk hands fall to his shoulders, sorrow fingers digging rough and tumble into his skin. “Dad? Huh? You know I thought he was gonna drink himself to death after you left? And he woulda deserved it.”  
  
“Don’t you say that. Not about him.”  
  
Grips him harder. “He woulda, Dean, because he hurt you. Fucked you up. I don’t know how. But it, it kills me that you think it’s you. He’s the monster. He’s crazy and selfish and you’re – you’re so  _good_. You’re just good in ways he’s not.”  
  
Tries to shake out of Sam’s iron hands because no, no, everything is wrong. Sam has the truth so twisted there are thorns in his head, a dark swirling Hell. But Sam won’t let him go.  
  
“No. For once in your fuckin’ life, you’re gonna listen to me. Dad  _sucks_. He just - sucks. As a father. He’s not even – we’re better hunters than him. You’re  _better_ than him. Braver and smarter and you’re…” Words sink into the pale light of the moon. One hand stuttering from Dean’s shoulder to Dean’s cheek. Touch feather light and damning. “You’re so beautiful.”  
  
Worst second of Dean’s life but he thinks about melting into the touch. Into Sammy’s soft, kind words. Melting Into everything Sammy wants and giving his mouth, flesh, the inside or outside, the taste of his come, the velvet squeeze of his ass.   
  
Flinches away hard, stumbling, chest breaking apart at the realization he could’ve just ripped and ruined everything.   
  
“Sorry,” Sam is mumbling, conscious now, embarrassed and hunching in on himself.  
  
Can’t stomach the sight. “I’m – I should be. Sammy. I can’t do this to you anymore.”  
  
“You’re not  _doing_ anything. I’m not – whatever you think is happening to me, I’m fine.”  
  
“Fine?” Laughter cruel and taunting him even in his own throat. “You want to fuck your own brother. That’s not  _fine_.”  
  
Sam’s turn to flinch and Dean wishes he could soften the harsh of his words. But maybe it’s what Sam needs. Cruelty to cleanse Dean from him.  
  
But then Sam is squaring his jaw, shaking his head, saying those words Dean has struggled so desperately to destroy. “I love you.”   
  
Strangely, the ground doesn’t break. Hell doesn’t swallow Dean up at the confession. World just keeps spinning. Everything is spinning.  
  
“I love you,” Sam repeats, bolder. “And I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t want you. I – God, I want you. But not just from you. Want things  _for_ you, too.”  
  
Dean swallows dry and sharp. Bleeding as Sam stumbles a little closer but doesn’t move away.  
  
“If I never, ever touch you, but you can smile without it looking like it’s killing you, that’ll be enough. I don’t care if you love me back, or want me. Just love yourself for once. Just give a damn about yourself.”  
  
Jack hammer trembling cracks the asphalt by the time Sam reaches him. Doesn’t touch, just watches Dean with those gentle, gentle eyes.  
  
“That’s what love is,” Sam whispers. “What dad gave you, took from you, that wasn’t love, Dean. That was… I don’t know. Fucked up. Bullshit. But it doesn’t have to be all you have.”  
  
-  
  
Sam wants to fuck him.  
  
But it’s okay if it never happens.  
  
Sam wants to fuck him. Sam wants something that Dean can give him but he isn’t asking for it. Is okay if he never gets it.   
  
Dean sits in the shower, dry away from the spray, scalding water falling at his feet, and thinks about how his little brother wants to fuck him but doesn’t care if he ever gets to.  
  
John wanted to fuck him. Did. Did and did and did even when he didn’t want to. When Dean didn’t want –   
  
Pushes himself up and steps under the water. Grits his teeth under the burn.  
  
Sam doesn’t want to fuck him. John doesn’t, didn’t, either. His brother and his dad are sick. He is the disease.


End file.
